Now, supposing these two villanous plans, neither of which your Lordships can bear to hear the sound of, to stand equal in point of morality, let us see how they stand in point of calculation.  The unexceptionable part of the 285,000_l._ amounted to 260,000_l._ a year; whereas, supposing every part of the new grants had been made to the most unworthy persons, it only amounted to 25,000_l._ a year.  Therefore, by his own account, given to you and to the Company, upon this occasion he has confiscated 260,000_l._ a year, the property of innocent, if not of meritorious individuals, in order to punish by confiscation those who had 25,000_l._ a year only.  This is the account he gives you himself of his honor, his justice, and his policy in these proceedings.

But, my Lords, he shall not escape so.  It is in your minutes, that so far was the Nabob from wishing to save the new exceptionable grants, that, at the time of the forced loan I have mentioned, and also when the resumption was proposed, he was perfectly willing to give up every one of them, and desired only that his mother, his uncles, and his relations, with other individuals, the prime of the Mahometan nobility of that country, should be spared.  Is it not enough that this poor Nabob, this wretched prince, is made a slave to the man now standing at your bar, that he is made by him a shame and a scandal to his family, his race, and his country, but he must be cruelly aspersed, and have faults and crimes attributed to him that do not belong to him?  I know nothing of his private character and conduct:  Mr. Hastings, who deals in scandalous anecdotes, knows them:  but I take it upon the face of Mr. Purling’s assertion, and I say, that the Nabob would have consented to an arbitrary taxation of the jaghires, and would have given up to absolute confiscation every man except those honorable persons I have mentioned.

The prisoner himself has called Mr. Wombwell to prove the names of those infamous persons with a partiality for whom Mr. Hastings has aspersed the Nabob, in order to lay the ground for the destruction of his family.  They amount to only six in number; and when we come to examine these six, we find that their jaghires were perfectly contemptible.  The list of the other jaghiredars, your Lordships see, fills up pages; and the amount of their incomes I have already stated.  Your Lordships now see how inconsiderable, both in number and amount, were the culpable jaghires, in the destruction of which he has involved the greater number and the meritorious.  You see that the Nabob never did propose any exemption of the former at any time; that this was a slander and a calumny on that unhappy man, in order to defend the violent acts of the prisoner, who has recourse to slander and calumny as a proper way to defend violence, outrage, and wrongs.